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Believe me, I understand and embrace the inherent hypocrisy of writing about this on a website with my name in the URL, but here we go anyway:
I am all for everyone having a voice, I just don’t think everyone has earned the microphone. And that’s what the Internet has done.
—Aaron Sorkin
I fear that most contemporary people are answering questions not because they’re flattered by the attention; they’re answering questions because they feel as though they deserve to be asked. About everything. Their opinions are special, so they are entitled to a public forum. Their voice is supposed to be heard, lest their life become empty…this in one paragraph (minus technology), explains the rise of New Media.
—Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur
To piggyback on Klosterman’s quote, I think most of us in Western culture feel owed attention. If you were born in the developed world after, say, 1985, and have access to the internet, chances are you’ve always had a platform of some variety—even if it’s “just a Facebook page.” You can communicate to more people from your cellphone in one instant than most people might have interacted with in their entire life 100 years ago. And you’ve been able to do so for a large part of your life. But to what end?
no one is responding to my tweet is something wrong with my beloved twitter [at] this moment [or] have you all forsaken me?
—@marthastewart
Even celebrities aren’t immune. “Listen to me! I am a unique and beautiful snowflake!” Sharing often becomes something akin to seeking identity in the act of being heard—as if the things we write and make and share have no worth until someone places worth on them by responding. But if no one listens, or at least we perceive a lack of attention, we often angrily shake our metaphorical fists at the sky, robbed of the attention that we are due. We deserve to be known, right? We must be validated by being heard. We are special. We are snowflakes.
The problem is, no one owes me anything. No one owes me a microphone or a platform. No one owes me their ears, their eyes, their time. Those things are valuable, each assaulted on a daily basis by an almost inescapable culture clamoring for our attention. They’re not automatic. Not owed. Not entitled. Not easy. You might have a microphone, but that doesn’t mean you have anything to say, or that anyone will listen.
And even if what we do grabs someone’s attention for a season, we have to understand how fickle modern audiences are. If I base my identity on having and holding your attention, I forget who I am as soon as you forget to pay attention to me. Being heard can’t be our motivation for speaking. Being responded to can’t be our motivation for sharing. Being discovered can’t be our motivation for creating.
God is very pleased.
said Mom
at 5:44pm on Saturday
my sentiments, exactly. and your last paragraph is golden.
said pat
at 7:48pm on Saturday
Excellent post. Thanks! I have done my little bit to let your words be spread to the distracted masses, even though it probably won’t be heard … how I try to see it is to continue as we were, yet also all try and see our digital existence as a time capsule for the future, and not just for the instant.
said Gavin Keech
at 5:55am on Sunday
Exactly why yours truly doesn’t have a blog…I got two turntables but has no microphone
word
said Randy
at 3:27pm on Sunday
“Being heard can’t be our motivation for speaking. Being responded to can’t be our motivation for sharing. Being discovered can’t be our motivation for creating.”
I just don’t understand what you’re suggesting as the reason for speaking and creation is if there is no audience.
I can understand how one may delight in making something purely for their own pleasure in the process and achievement yet I’m confused how one can create anything with a message or say a word unless it’s meant to be responded to. If you’re just talking to yourself then there’s places for people like that…
I know we can’t quite compare ourselves to God who is perfect and happy in his triune relationship where everything that is said is received and responded to perfectly. Also God’s word creates and by it the world is sustained.
As humanity our words are often fallen, they lack any link to Meaning and seek to destroy it, they are mumbled, distorted, misheard & misinterpreted. As a humanity our locus of meaning is from without and not within, so we need to be in constant contact to imbue our lives with meaning.
I would argue that you can’t speak without an intended audience or something to happen as a result. Really what matters is who is the audience. Who are you talking to and what is the motivation in the performance of that.
said Casper
at 12:27am on Monday
I mostly write to articulate a thought. I write more in private than I do in public. The fact that other people read some of those articulated thoughts in a public forum and occasionally respond to them is enjoyable, but that’s not my motivation for doing it. Writing helps me process, and without the act of forming words and sentences and paragraphs, I’m often left with vagaries and half-formed approaches to topics rattling around in my head. If I can’t explain something in a form that makes sense (even to myself), then how can I truly say I understand it?
Obviously, I disagree with your first assessment. As for results, there are still results if you’re not completely focused on audience and discovery, but those results might not be responsive or involve other people. My motivations are no less valid because they don’t involve audience, they’re just different motives.
said Joshua
In the words of the great philosopher, Popeye… “I am what I am, and that’s all that I am.”
Listen or not, retweet or don’t … I don’t care.
Good word, my friend.
said Ratcliffe
at 12:01pm on Monday
Casper…I would argue that when I talk to myself, I am always guaranteed an intelligent conversation…
Humor aside, you seem to state a belief in God but yet to define us humans as merely deriving our being “from without” and totally dependent on each other “to imbue our lives with meaning.” If you are indeed a believer, this seems contradictory at best. But I digress…
If you truly believe that you cannot speak, cannot be, cannot communicate a message, cannot create, without an audience, and that this audience can only be human, then does it not follow that you must also be constantly looking for the appropriate audience? And that in so doing, disappointment will just about always be your companion? Many search long for just the right group that will listen to what they have to say, just hear them, just see what they have created, just look at what they have done…all in vain.
I choose to believe that we are given the urge, voice, word, the creativity in whatever form it comes, by the Creator. The Audience, if you will, is built in. Sometimes, if we are blessed, those other people notice.
said Mom
at 12:23pm on Monday
All I was hinting at was that whenever you compose something in a meaningful way you’re storing information, a message. That information is stored in some manner so that someone can read it again in a meaningful way, be that yourself or someone else.
I don’t even think it’s possible to create entirely for yourself. What you’re often doing is pleasing what you have been told by others is valuable. Sure you may delight and emote upon creating but that is linked into the purpose of the act where you must have some standard which cannot be entirely set from within.
I never limited the audience to Man and was implying that the audience that matters is God.
I think for those who pursue creativity this is a huge thing that we don’t ponder enough. When we grab out tool of choice and set out to make something, who are we trying to delight? Sometimes it’s quite specific but I’d say it’s often an invisible unknown audience composed of the soundbytes of those who influence us (big or small, good or bad) yet is it a Creator who delights in creating and who accepts us wholly into relationship on the grounds of His own work. Thus the only thing that we can give of value to Him is worship. Where we are acknowledging His person(s) and character and creating in honour of that.
On the other issue of identity being from without. I was trying to say that we’re meaningless on our own. We are not only compositions of other human people and their thoughts (so we have little claim to being intrinsically unique and having complete self direction) but we are also created by God as unique (thus our uniqueness is the result of the person of God not our self) and without on going relationship with Him we are nothing. Even if you never acknowledge God, he’s always been sustaining you by first imbuing you with his identity (imago dei) and then continuing to provide grace for you. Thus you are in constant reliance upon him for your existence, to be given meaning. In and of itself everything is meaningless but because of God everything has meaning.
said Casper
at 11:37pm on Monday
Aha…you and Joshua are more alike than you realize. Read that last paragraph again…and then read it again. Then read your last post, then read his last paragraph again. It may start to sink in….Keep pondering my child. You are on the right path.
said Mom
at 11:27am on Tuesday
I’m all for freedom of expression. It’s not so much about being heard or listened to but rather expressing yourself.
said Dayngr
at 10:40am on Wednesday
Mom wisdom.
said J/
at 7:52pm on Thursday
THIS IS SOOOO GOOD!
said Natalie
at 8:10pm on Friday
I appreciate this post. Especially after having spent 2 weeks in Italy looking at grand artworks that were seldom, if ever, signed by their creators. There was a sense of fullness that came from the making, not the recognition of the one making the work, but rather the greater thing to which the work pointed. I think how many great artists whose work we would have lost if they had only assigned value and thus the need to make work based on an audience. It is true that the words and praise of men is fleeting and thus not always a trustworthy source for ascribing value. In fact, it is foolish to do so, for if we do, we risk being satisfied with the approval of the mass rather than pushing ourselves beyond the praise. History tends to prove that great minds that carry the ideas that shift paradigms are generally misunderstood during their lives. That is what makes them on the edge.
said Kayb
at 10:16pm on Saturday
As has been said before, our audience is God. We create because he created – we can’t help it, we’re like him and we just like doing that sort of thing.
However, is it really so bad to create for others? If our motive is first to please God and then to encourage others to please him as well? Since God is triune, part of the image we bear is a desire for community. So part of the pleasure for me in making a delicious breakfast is to delight my husband and children – not so they will like me, but so that they (and I ) will like this good life that God gave us. Part of the pleasure in drawing a beautiful picture is seeing the joy and creativity it inspires in another.
God is the only one whose creation points back only to himself, for the rest of us our creations ought to point back to him. As Augustine said, some things are to be used and some are to be enjoyed for their own sake. God is the only good to be enjoyed for his own sake – all else is to be used to enjoy him.
Like the anonymous artists of the middle ages – all work is for God alone – and yet thanks to their work we can all share a vision of God’s grandeur together.
said Rebecca Wood
at 12:13pm on Tuesday
word.
said Amy Jones
at 1:45pm on Tuesday
I don’t think wanting an audience or a response is inherently wrong. It’s when we base our identity on those things that can be a problem.
said Whitey
at 9:50am on Thursday